Monday, November 29, 2010

Rage Against the Grind

"You only get one shot.Do not miss your chance to blow.This opportunity comes once in a lifetime."

***"Lose Yourself" by Eminem

When I started this blog I intended to post daily. Of course, life and laziness and a multitude of playful diversions altered my good intentions. Anyone who blogs knows how challenging it can be to post on a regular basis. This weekend I deleted bookmarks of food blogs I used to read, and when I browsed them one last time, I noticed that almost 95 percent of them were defunct. A lot of people storm out of the blogging gate with lofty intentions, but most are shot down with the reality that blogging regularly is a grind.

With the year waning, I've decided to rage against the grind. What inspired me to rage against the grind? Jay-Z. Yes, you heard correctly. Jay-Z. I read the following excerpt from his autobiography where he talks about his early passion to put pen to paper:

“Everywhere I went I’d write. If I was crossing a street with my friends and a rhyme came to me, I’d break out my binder, spread it on a mailbox or lamppost and write the rhyme before I crossed the street. If I didn't have notebook with me, I’d run to the corner store, buy something, then find a pen to write it on the back of the brown paper bag.”

I admire this. I'm not a fan of rap, but I've always admired how rappers are ambassadors of the written word. Most rappers are prolific and they don't get trapped in the snare of literary snootiness.

With Jay-Z's inspiration, I've decided to cut loose and post daily. I'm not going to worry about filtering or polishing. I'm just going to write. I know that I'll sift through a lot of silt and muck, but I'm hoping to acquire a few flecks of gold in this experiment.

keeping it real,

muddy

PS. . . The following passage at the end of the book, blew me away and demonstrates the power of the written word. I also like the idea of individuals creating their own culture when the one they're given doesn't suit them.

“We were kids without fathers, so we found our fathers on wax and on the streets and in history, and in a way, that was a gift. We got to pick and choose the ancestors who would inspire the world we were going to make for ourselves. That was part of the ethos of that time and place, and it got built in to the culture we created. Rap took the remnants of a dying society and created something new. Our fathers were gone, usually because they just bounced, but we took their old records and used them to build something fresh.”

Muddy,Coincidentally, the Anchorage NPR station sounded a lot like KBHR. I'm guessing it was a small market that couldn't afford to buy all of the programming, so NPR was a couple of hours of news in the morning, followed by 8 hours of indie music, then a little news right before dinner time. Used to be, at least, back in the mid '90s.